How cassettes went from forgotten to hip

For many, listening to music via cassette might seem like an ancient concept. However, especially over recent years, the cassette has proven it’s much more than just a fuzzy relic from the 1990s.

Cassette sales hit 136,000 in the UK for 2023, according to Official Charts Company’ data. The biggest seller was Gen-Z pop princess Oliva Rodrigo and her ‘GUTS’ (it moved 8,500 copies) album; proof that major label acts can find success through reviving this format and targeting teenage fans. 

The American market is even bigger: last year cassette sales hit 430k units, which represented a x5 increase on where overall U.S. sales were back in 2013. And, so far across the 2020s, major pop stars including Taylor Swift (whose album ‘1989’, which sold 17,500 tapes, was the biggest seller in the US for 2023), Charli XCX, and Harry Styles have all wisely embraced this format, making cassettes something visible again in mainstream pop culture. 

Independent artists have also found a way to turn cassette runs into something precious and lucrative. For example, the American rapper Westside Gunn’s 2017 album, ‘Flygod’, recently sold on Discogs for a whopping £367.61 (approx $465) on cassette. Due to cassette releases like this being much more limited, the scarcity turns them into artsier, highly-sought after collectibles.

“Some of the fans don’t even own a device to play their new cassettes on,” explains the Vancouver-based record label owner DJ Chong Wizard, who says he led a sold-out 100-cassette run of cult Canadian rap producer Nicholas Craven’s 2017 ‘Niko Bellic’ project. “They just want to support the artists they love and own a piece of history. It’s more than a product, as with cassettes you’re selling people nostalgia.”

This nostalgia has boosted the secondhand market, too, and vintage tapes have noticeably risen in value over recent years, with Gen Z’s appreciation for the 90s aesthetic and all things physical media meaning owning tapes suddenly feels like a much more authentic link back to the musical past. At their peak, 83 million cassettes were sold per year, which means the secondhand market for tapes and equipment remains its own vast, mini industry. 

Buying these tapes are also a way for Gen Zers and millennials to log out of the streaming world, with many desiring musical formats that are far more DIY in their approach. They want to be reminded of an analog era before Spotify and Apple Music, where if you wanted to listen to a specific song on your favorite album then you literally had to press your thumb down on a fast-forward or rewind button and be prepared to wait minutes for the hissing tape reels to finally catch up. 

“With everything now relegated to streaming and digital, the new generation of music listeners are starting to value more tangible items, especially analog ones,” explains Dean Horwitz, who runs the boutique Nature Sounds label. He sells limited direct-to-consumer vinyl and cassette runs of critically acclaimed underground rap releases by artists including Mach-Hommy, Your Old Droog, and Madlib. Horwitz adds: “Cars as late as 2010 still have cassette decks and you see a lot of people now purchasing used Walkman’s online.”

“Hip-hop culture in particular has always embraced a lo-fi aesthetic and cassettes really embody that as a format. A lot of teenagers are inheriting their parents’ old cars and realizing [they] come equipped with tape decks. There’s something very unique about popping a tape in your car and riding around, you know?” – Dean Horwitz

So, we know cassettes are seen as “cool” again, but what exactly are the hearable benefits of listening to one? After all, the reels in tapes degrade over time and cassettes can be known for having a warped, more static-heavy sound. Yet these setbacks only really add to their consumer appeal, according to DJ Chong Wizard. 

The imperfect sound, he argues, makes even more sense amid such an imperfect world, carrying its own special lo-fi charm. “That authentic tape sound from the 1990s is what people really want right now,” he claims. “There’s digital filters and even sound effect pedals that have different tape texture settings, just so modern music producers can mimic the classic cassette sound. A lot of listeners are also bored of that sharp digital sound you get with streaming. It’s clear they want a rounded, warm, duller sound.”

Horwitz agrees: “Hip-hop culture in particular has always embraced a lo-fi aesthetic and cassettes really embody that as a format. A lot of teenagers are also inheriting their parents’ old cars or buying their first used car and realising many still come equipped with tape decks. There’s something very unique about popping a tape in your car and riding around, you know? With all the outside noise, you don’t really notice the imperfections of the format.”

But what about the long-term future of cassettes? Could the current sales growth just be a flash in the pan? Well, it’s clear the format isn’t without its critics. In the past, former cassette label manager Jen Long has described the contemporary tape boom as purely a revenue-based strategy, calling it “just another format being used by artists to get up the charts and milk money from people”.

Horwitz, though, backs them to “continue to grow” in the eyes of consumers. He says there’s been a fundamental step-change in contemporary artists’ release strategies due to new cassettes now being expected from music fans. “I think as long as people collect vintage tapes,” Horwitz says, “then they will always want to include newer releases in their collection too. In the early days, most listeners could only discover new rap music from a cassette. The rise of tapes, therefore, are a nostalgic nod to that original culture.”

DJ Chong Wizard insists that even if tapes can’t sustain their current mainstream growth, there will always be a collector community ready to support them. “It’s a niche collector's item and, I think with anything, its popularity will come and go in cycles,” he adds. “But I know some of the hardcore people who love tapes, and they will collect them until the day they die. The retro heads will always keep tapes alive!” 

The next time you get on a train and see someone popping a tape into their Walkman, I promise that you haven’t accidentally jumped through a time loop back to 1992. Cassettes – which were first sold commercially by electronics brand Philips way back in 1963 – are here to stay.